One of the most fundamental reasons for Google’s success is the site’s speed — search queries typically take a fraction of a second, and most of the company’s other services are usually very snappy as well (save for Gmail, which occasionally bogs down). Part of this speed can be attributed to the company’s obsession with minimalist design and its vast server farms, but you can be sure there’s no shortage of optimization that’s going on to make sure pages load as quickly as possible on the front end, too.
To help streamline its sites, Google has been using an internal tool called Page Speed, and starting today it’s opening up the tool to the developer community. The newly open-sourced tool is a Firefox plugin that integrates with Firebug, making suggestions on how to speed up your site based on best practices.
From the Google blog post:
For example, Page Speed automatically optimizes images for you, giving you a compressed image that you can use immediately on your web site. It also identifies issues such as JavaScript and CSS loaded by your page that wasn’t actually used to display the page, which can help reduce time your users spend waiting for the page to download and display.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because Yahoo offers a similar tool for Firefox called YSlow, which is also meant to help developers streamline their websites.
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Can you feel the tingling in the air? If you haven’t found it already,you will. This is going to be the summer of love. I am talking, of course, about smartphone love. The serenades have already begun for the June 6 launch of the Palm Pre. Next week, Apple will reveal it’s next iPhone (you know MG is going to get one). Blackberry might come out with its second Storm by summer’s end. And the lovefest will continue throughout the year with launch after launch of new Android phones as well. It will be practically nonstop. I hope you can handle it.
These aren’t just attractive new playthings. They represent something much deeper and more meaningful. They represent a major transition in both the mobile phone industry and in mobile computing. The iPhone paved the way, but now the Web phones are ready to take over the world. Their relative numbers compared to basic feature phones may still be small, but their mindshare and profits are large. Already, the iPhone and Blackberry Web phones are gobbling up a majority of the industry’s profits.
Why? It has nothing to do with making phone calls. The Web in your pocket means you always have something to read, you are always connected to your digital network, and you can always reach out and Tweet someone or poke them or send them an email. And if all that fails, you can still call. But the problem with actually speaking to someone is that you can only carry on one conversation at a time. With a Web phone, you can keep track of your entire conversation stream.
The iPhone has been around long enough that everybody wants one. But if you don’t like AT&T, now there will soon be plenty of other options. Everyone is obsessing about the Palm Pre today, with its Twitter search and soon-to-be blocked iTunes syncing (maybe). John Biggs at CrunchGear thinks the Pre will be an also-ran, but it will probably be the biggest-selling also-ran in Sprint’s lineup. Today’s preliminary Plam Pre excitement will soon be overtaken by iPhone mania (it might have a glowing apple!).
The new iPhone will still be missing some crucial things, like the ability to run more than one app at the same time. And this will leave an opening for BlackBerry to keep growing side-by-side the iPhone and for the the steady march of Android into the realm of significance numbers-wise. Before you know it, everyone will be carrying a Web phone of one kind or another. But be careful. These shiny new beacons promise to free your mind, but they also have the power to drag you down. They demand attention at all times, even when you are walking down the street. Remember, it is important to look away every now and then, otherwise you might get hit by a car.
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For the past several weeks, I’ve been noticing something about my iPhone: Severe slowness. I put it sleep and wake it back up, clear its memory (with an app), restart it and even sometimes manually reboot it — some of these methods alleviate the symptoms, sometimes. Other times, I have to just deal with it being too unbearably slow to do much of anything, including the basic phone functionality like placing a call or sending a text message. And sometimes the iPhone gets really hot, even when it’s in its sleep state, and I’ll turn it back on to see the battery mostly drained.
And while I’m not above simply complaining about my own problems with tech, I’ve talked to a lot of other people recently who are having the exact same issues. I’m not sure why this is happening. Some people think it’s because the device has been around for about a year now, and a lot of us have loaded a ton of apps on the thing. I should probably do a factory reset of the device, wiping it on iTunes. But as anyone who has done that before will know, that’s a big pain in the ass.
So my solution is an expensive one: Wait for the new iPhone. We all know it’s coming, it’s just a matter of when. There still seems to be some debate if Apple will actually announce it at the WWDC keynote on Monday (which we’ll be at), or if it will use that event to focus on OS X Snow Leopard and the new iPhone OS 3.0. But seeing as Apple already had an event for the new iPhone OS, I think we will see the new hardware unveiled at the event, just like we did last year. Though I suspect it won’t be available in stores until later on, probably July, once again.
The new hardware, which is believed to be significantly faster, will solve my issue — for now. But there’s a larger question behind it: Should you really have to update your phone once a year?
The answer is of course, no — but just as with the iPod line of products, Apple sets their yearly update cycles knowing full well that a lot of current model owners are going to opt to upgrade. But what if I didn’t want to? Would I be stuck with this phone that is driving me crazy? Has Apple developed a device which is only optimized to be used for about a year? It may sound crazy, but even if you chalk mine and everyone else’s performance issues up to some weird too-many-app bug, you still have the battery issue to consider.
The iPhone doesn’t have a battery that a user can easily replace. While some people complain about this for long trips, the real issue is that battery performance wears down over time after a certain number of recharge cycles. And after about a year with this iPhone 3G, the battery life is noticeably worse than it was when I got it. So if I did want to keep this device, I would have to send it in to have the battery replaced for me. Guess how much that costs? Just about $100.
Hopefully, that helps you see a big issue: Aside from the performance issues, do I pay Apple $100, and lose my phone for a few days while they replace the battery, or do I pay a little bit more to get an entirely new phone?
AT&T makes this a pretty easy call by allowing us to pay the subsidized contract price ($199 or $299 versus $499 or $599), even though we technically haven’t completed our last 2-year contracts. And it’s of course a smart move, because it’s another two years of lock-in that they have over us.
At some point, you’re going to want to get out of that contract. But Apple’s yearly iPhone refresh combined with the 2-year contract means that for many of us, we’re unlikely to ever see our contract time dip under a year to go. It’s a vicious cycle.
I bought the original iPhone two years ago, and right before the iPhone 3G came along, I wondered what would happen to all those first generation models — would they all go to heaven? The answer is no. Instead, they either went to family members, to eBay, or in my case, to the side of my bed as an ultra expensive alarm clock.
My contract for that first iPhone would just be expiring on it right now — something which Palm knows, and why it wanted to launch the Pre now. The Pre sounds great. I know some people who have used one and say that it is a really nice phone. But most of them also say that it won’t replace the iPhone for them, so it’s not really even something I’m considering at this point. The amount of money and time I’ve invested in my app collection is reason alone for me not to switch. Oh yes, but I couldn’t anyway since I have a year left on my AT&T contract.
Instead, I will buy this third generation iPhone and be stuck with two ultra expensive alarm clocks. Actually, I not even sure my iPhone 3G will work in that capacity at that point. I still believe it’s one of the best tech purchases I’ve ever made, but it’d be nicer if it had a lifespan of more than a year.
Tesla, which has now delivered 500 Roadsters, will be opening several new sales showrooms this summer, the company says. Currently the company has showrooms only in California. Three of the new showrooms will be in Europe - London, Monaco and Munich. New York, Seattle, Chicago and Miami are also on the list.
The company says that the first Roadsters will be delivered to European buyers this summer. At least three Tesla buyers have exported their cars to Europe already, though (one each to Germany, Norway and Spain).
The Palm Pre—you may have heard of it—comes out on Saturday, but all sorts of media "outlets" have already published their reviews; I don't know when our review will go up. And since it's my feeling that most of you already assume the phone is "good," I've gone ahead and collected a few excerpts of the more critical points. You know, the part of the review that goes something like, "Now, the Palm Pre isn't perfect; we found a few problems with it. And they are..." That part. So let's get on with it. From the Wall Street Journal :
Quite often when we write about something related to Twitter, it’s funny or stupid — or both. But it’s important to remember that Twitter at its core is a powerful medium for disseminating information. And sometimes that power can be used for good — like fighting cancer.
Drew Olanoff, a man fairly well known in web circles, recently got some horrible news: He has cancer. That’s just about the worst news anyone could ever want to hear. But rather than sit around and feel bad about it, Olanoff decided to be proactive and use the bad situation for some good. He teamed up with developer Mike Demers to create Blame Drew’s Cancer, a site that asks you to blame everything that goes wrong in your life, on Drew’s cancer.
What’s great about this is that people love to use Twitter to bitch about things. Hell, I do it just as much as anyone — it’s a great past time. But usually those tweets just come off as lame complaints to most of your followers. But now, using the #BlameDrewsCancer hash-tag, all of these tweets are pulled into the site, where they will be tallied to lead to what will hopefully be a large donation to the American Cancer Society and the Make a Wish Foundation.
As a person who’s been heavily involved in the web space for some time across a range of companies, Olanoff realized Twitter was a perfect medium for his message. And just a few days after the launch of the site, it’s working to great effect. This morning, the cause was a top trending topic on Twitter. And even Lance Armstrong, who has just under 1 million followers, tweeted it out.
Luckily, Olanoff’s Hodgkins Lymphoma has a good cure rate. And we wish him the best of luck as he undergoes months of treatment. But what he needs right now is for some companies to step up to the plate and pledge to donate $1 for every unique person that tweets out his #blamedrewscancer message.
Pretty much every company these days is talking about how it can use Twitter to futher its brand. I see no better opportunity than this, right here, right now.
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The allure of building a business around user-generated content is fading fast. SplashCast, a company which launched two years ago around the notion of helping consumers put together videos, text, graphics, and music in embeddable broadcast “channels,” is discontinuing its original product. “Most of us would rather consume than create. This is one of the big ticket findings of the Web 2.0 technology wave,” concludes CEO Michael Berkley.
And after failing to raise a B round of funding, he is now trying to sell the company. Instead of trying to make money off of user-generated broadcast channels, he is focusing on his newer Social TV product, which adds social features such as chat, commenting, and polling to professionally-produced videos.
The SplashCast product being discontinued was simply too complicated for most consumers. It was a full content-management system which allowed consumers to bring together videos with images, text, and sound. In a candid assessment of why it fell flat, Berkley says: “We were hoping to launch a publishing revolution. What we found, however, is that very few users are willing and able to make an ongoing commitment to publishing and distributing content. Lots of users test; few stick with it.”
While more than 100,000 SplashCast accounts have been created, “only a few thousand” use the product regularly, he tells me. Partly, this is the curse of building a business which relies on the creativity of users. “Like so many other Web 2.0 companies,” admits Berkley, “we simply haven’t found a way to meaningfully monetize user generated content. Users are loathe to pay meaningful subscription fees. Furthermore, advertising on user-generated video content hasn’t played out—just ask YouTube.” If only a tiny fraction of users create anything worthwhile, you either need a whole lot of users to make that work or you need to be able to attract the most creative people to your product.
But partly, SplashCast also suffered from the curse of not keeping things simple. Berkley is taking that to heart by shifting the company’s remaining resources to making Hulu-quality videos more social on Facebook and MySpace. Berkley says SplashCast videos reach 5.8 million unique viewers per month and it streams 7.2 million videos. A full 90 percent of those streams come from only 25 SplashCast channels, mostly centered around network TV shows like 24 and the Simpsons or major label music artists.
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French startup Goojet is coming out with an updated version of its mobile content and services suite after getting some runway with the beta product it launched about a year ago, six months after winning the Le Web 3 startup competition. At the same time, the company is announcing that it has raised its second round of financing to the tune of €6 million (approx. $8.5 million) after raising initial funding for the project back in December 2007. The total amount of capital invested in the company is now at a healthy €8.3 million. Like its Series A round, the money comes from Partech International, Elaia Partners and IRDI-ICSO. Paris-based VC firm Orkos Capital participated in the new round as well for the first time.
Moving around in Google Street View is not always intuitive. You always end up clicking aimlessly a few times before you can really figure out how to move about. Well, now navigating within Street View is easier thanks to the “pancake.” Google is adding a useful tool called the “pancake” to Street View on Google Maps that lets you travel to a new point within a photo panorama by double clicking on the place or object you would like to see. Google says that it has been able to accomplish this by making a compact representation of the building facade and road geometry for all the Street View panoramas. As you move your mouse within Street View, you’ll see the pancake, which you can move up and down a street and then click on a restaurant, road, building or object nearby. The pancake is shown as a circle on roads and a rectangle when following the facade of a building.
The pancake will transport you to the best view of an object in that direction. Google also says that the pancake will often show a little magnifying glass in the bottom right to indicate that double clicking will zoom in on the current image rather than transport you to a closer location.
The pancake also prevents you from getting lost. If you want to go back to the original view of the street from the pancake, you can hit the return arrow in the address box to get back to the previous location. Previously, you could only move backward and forward along a street to view the next panorama, so the ability to quickly zoom in from anywhere to various spots along a particular road actually makes navigating within Street View much less frustrating.
Check it out in the embedded interactive Street View below, or watch the video:
I’m not even sure what he’s talking about (this?), but this is too good not to post. The most brilliantly paranoid man on the Internet draws a line in the sand with our own MG Siegler.
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CEO Scott Cahill confirmed the shutdown yesterday in an email to investors, saying that Hercules had “foreclosed on its collateral and has sold the company's intellectual property to a third party”:
From: “Cahill, Scott” Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2009 16:42:29 -0400 To: Subject: Final Kadoink Update Dear Angel Investor:
This is the final update on Kadoink. On Friday, May 30th, Kadoink completed the sale of its assets. As the attached letter indicates, the company contacted over 600 parties to determine interest in an acquisition of the company's assets. Of those, 22 expressed interest. Following a due diligence period, the Company received 6 bids for the acquisition of the Company's intellectual property. Unfortunately, the highest offer was insufficient to pay the company's secured lender in full. The company's secured lender, Hercules Technology II, L.P. and Hercules Technology Growth Capital, Inc. has foreclosed on its collateral and has sold the company's intellectual property to a third party. While the details of the transaction between Hercules and the buyer are subject to a confidentiality provision, the company can assure investors that the purchaser is not an insider and the transaction was arms-length.
The Company's inability to pay its secured creditor in full means that that the Company, with certainty, is unable to make any payments on the general unsecured claims against it. Additionally, investors will receive no return on their investment. The company will be dissolved under state law. Please consult with your tax advisor regarding how you, or your organization, should handle losses arising from the closure of the company.
On a final note, I regret that we were unable to return at least some portion of your investment to you. While we were optimistic at the start of the process that this might be achievable and we were ultimately satisfied with the size of the top bidders given what we learned over time regarding sales such as ours, it is disappointing nonetheless.
I wish you all the best in your future endeavors and investments.
Best Regards,
Scott
Venture debt looks extremely attractive when things are going well for a startup. The dilution to shareholders is minimal, usually just some warrants attached to the debt. It can make a lot of sense to raise debt when building out infrastructure, particularly since the debt can be secured against hardware being purchased.
But the terms of the debt are key, particularly under what circumstances the creditor can come in and shut down the company. Many creditors look for triggers in the financial statements that give them the right to seize assets. That’s likely what happened with Kadoink, and it’s a sad way to end a company that may still have a shot at doing something interesting. Smart entrepreneurs only accept debt agreements that require nothing but payments to be made on time. As long as those payments come in, the creditor has to stay away. Terms are usually less attractive, but in the end it may save you from the deadpool.
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It’s an unlikely relationship, but Twitter and sports have gotten along quite nicely over the past few months. We all know about Shaq tweeting, and perhaps you even heard about the players tweeting during halftime of games. And if you watch ESPN or read ESPN the Magazine, you’ll find it littered with dozens of references to the service. At first, these references were made in jest, but now they’re mostly serious. But the Twitter/sports relationship runs the risk of souring after a lawsuit was publicized today.
Tony La Russa, the manager of the St. Louis Cardinals Major League Baseball franchise is suing Twitter claiming that someone is pretending to be him on the site. Of course, he could have just asked the service to take that fake account down — something which it does fairly regularly — but instead, the suit filed last month in the Superior Court of California in San Francisco seeks “unspecified damages.” Twitter has since taken down the fake account.
The suit is specifically for “trademark infringement, trademark dilution and misappropriation of name and likeness,” according to MLB.com. It also said the tweets were “derogatory and demeaning.” ESPN has some other details including that La Russa’s lawyers apparently included screenshots of these fake tweets which included, “Hey there! Tony La Russa is using Twitter.” No such tweet exists on Twitter Search, but perhaps Twitter has purged the results. Some of the tweets in question also apparently talk about a couple of Cardinals players who have passed away in recent years, which angered La Russa.
Impersonation continues to be an issue on the web in general. Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler recently tried to sue a group of anonymous bloggers for pretending to be him — of course, since they were anonymous, they couldn’t be tracked down and thus, didn’t show up for court. But Twitter is particularly hot right now and so a lot of people are taking advantage of it to make fake accounts for famous people. This is something that made Kanye West mad as hell a few weeks ago.
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Kyle at the great site iFixIt.com has just opened a new service dedicated to the collection and curation of user-generated content called Gear Teardown. The service, sort of like a how-to site for crazy people, allows folks to document each step in the process of tearing down, and hopefully putting back together, their gadgets. For example, this teardown of the Moto Krave shows six steps, some more esoteric than others, and essentially allows anyone to figure out which chips are used in each phone.
VeriSign has just put out its quarterly report on the web domain industry stating that there are now just about 183 million domain names in existence. This represents a 3% increase from last quarter and a 12% increase from last year. But perhaps most interesting is the slight turnaround that has taken place in the all-important .com/.net section of the industry.
The fourth quarter of the year is traditionally a slow one for .com and .net registrations, but the whole of 2008 was particularly slow, at least partially due to the “current macro-economic environment,” according to the report. But Q1 2009 saw those numbers turn around:
New .com and .net registrations were added at an average of approximately 2.4 million per month in the first quarter of 2009 for a total of 7.3 million new registrations in the quarter. This 17 percent increase from the previous quarter also marked the first positive growth rate in new registrations since the first quarter of 2008.
Also interesting is that domain renewals turned around for the first time in a few years. Beginning in Q1 2007, .com and .net renewal rates began declining from a Q4 2006 peak of 77%. That decline continued through Q4 2008, when the renewal number reached a low of 70%. But Q1 2009 brought the first uptick in the number (71%) in over 2 years.
So after a small depression, things appear to be looking up for .com domains once again. But that growth looks fairly minimal when compared to ccTLD (Country Code Top Level Domains). Those are the domains that end in things like .cn (China) and .de (Germany), representing countries. While .com is still far and away the biggest domain, .cn and .de have both surpassed .net for the number 2 and 3 spots on the list, respectively.
You can find a lot more data in the full PDF report here.
Intel said today that it plans to acquire Wind River Systems, maker of software for embedded devices - think smartphones, other consumer electronics devices, in-car “info-tainment” systems, networking equipment and the likes- in a deal valued at approx. $884 million (or all outstanding Wind River common stock for $11.50 per share in cash). With the move, Intel aims to grow its processor and software presence outside the traditional PC and server market segments into embedded systems and mobile handheld devices, which it deems an important growth area for the company.
The acquisition is expected to close this summer, subject to certain regulatory approvals and other conditions specified in the definitive agreement, and will result in Wind River to become a full subsidiary of Intel under its Software and Services Group umbrella. Wind River has more than 1,600 employees and operations in more than 15 countries, and last reported annual revenues of $359.7 million.
Microsoft this morning announced that it is rolling out Bing Travel, one of the verticals it’s focusing much of its attention on when it comes to the recently unveiled “decision engine” the company set out to conquer market share from Google and Yahoo Search. Bing Travel, as we mentioned when we posted the first screenshots based on the Kumo preview, combines a lot of the airfare and hotel reservation tools from Microsoft’s 2008 acquisition of Farecast with news and other editorial content from MSN Travel (in fact, travel.msn.com already redirects to the new search engine).
Bing Travel is one of the initiatives that Microsoft is launching to differentiate Bing from traditional search engines which mostly provide information and links instead of tools that help visitors make more informed decision quicker. Customers will be able to take advantage of tools and features like Price Predictor (designed to forecast how airfare prices are going to evolve), Rate Indicator (set up to highlight the best hotel deals), but also Travel Deals, Comparison Flight & Hotel Search, and Fare Alerts.
According to Redmond, 45 percent of people use a search engine to select a flight or hotel. Out of those, a survey by Bing Travel pointed out that 52 percent of potential travelers search three or more sites before booking their airfare, and 42 percent of travelers spend between one and four weeks weighing their travel options (17 percent even spend more than one month). Microsoft wants to reduce that time by centralizing comprehensive results based on searches for travel information in one place.
We’ll take Bing Travel for spin and post a detailed post about our findings soon, but for now do tell us what your first impression of Bing’s Travel section is in comments.
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Some YouTube partners are being hit with e-mails seemingly coming from Google / YouTube teams attempting to trick them into replying with their login credentials and other personal information. One partner contacted us with screenshots of the phishing messages, the first received at the end of May and the second on June 3rd, coming from and delivered to different accounts.
While the first e-mail was quite amateuristic of nature and came filled with stuff that should raise quite some warning flags (typos, clumsy phrasing, Youtube instead of YouTube, etc.), the second appeared more genuine and had a body text edited rather professionally (see screenshot below).
In both cases, the YouTube partner was told that there was some kind of problem with his or her account, either with videos that purportedly contained copyrighted material, hate speech/bullying, or other issues that violate the service’s ToS. The first e-mail urged partners to respond with their username, password, e-mail address and D.O.B, while the second asked only for the password.
It’s unclear whether this phishing scam was aimed at our tipster specifically or if this is a more widespread problem (any YouTube partners wanna chip in?), but in any case YouTube has been alerted by the user and myself, although we have yet to receive a response.
YouTube partners, be aware and spread the word!
Update: official statement from YouTube:
“We are aware of recent phishing emails where users posing as Google or YouTube support have tried to obtain the login credentials of our partners. Security is a top concern at YouTube and action has been taken against these users and we are taking steps to prevent potential future occurrences. YouTube will never send an unsolicited message asking for your password or other sensitive information by email or through a link.”
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Well people, it’s time. It’s time we celebrated the tech scene in Europe with an awards event which we can really call our own. So TechCrunch Europe will, on July 9, hold the first Europe-wide awards ceremony for technology innovation in London. “The Europas” - The TechCrunch Europe Awards 2009 - will honor the best tech companies and startups across the web and mobile scene from across the continent of Europe. The first tranche of tickets are now on sale.
These awards will recognize and celebrate the most compelling technology startups, Internet and mobile innovations of the past year (Summer 08 - Summer 09), with the tech community invited to have a say in which finalists should be win. Leading lights of the the tech community will be invited to give away the awards to the winners, so you’ll have the opportunity to meet your tech heroes and heroines. The initial filtering will be done by referencing our database on European companies on CrunchBase (so make sure you are in it), then by public vote online, with the final Award winners to be determined based both on the popular votes received through website voting and by The Europas Judging Committee.
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In September 2007 we launched TechCrunch UK & Ireland. But within three months we realised the tech story that needed to be written was across Europe. So we went on tour to find contacts and companies. This year we’ve re-launched as TechCrunch Europe and begun running events across the continent to bring the European tech scene together, along with our first ever day-long conference. Today we’re opening up TechCrunch Europe to new contributors from across Europe so that we can really tell the European tech story the way it is.
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Heavy hitting angel investor Ron Conway, who’s been called the “Godfather of Silicon Valley” by Gary Rivlin, is now focusing most of his investment attention on “real-time data,” according to an email he sent out to friends and contacts earlier this week. Conway was one of the earliest investors in Google, and has invested in more than 500 startups, he’s said in the past.
Conway is changing his relationship with Baseline Ventures, a fund run by Steve Anderson. Since 2006 Baseline has taken the lead in managing Conway’s deal flow. Now, Conway says, he’s reverting back to doing all of his investments directly. He’ll still work closely with Baseline, he says, particularly in syndicating angel rounds and sharing deal flow.
Conway is also accelerating his investing, he says in the email, and has a goal to invest in 40-50 companies in the next 18 months. His focus will be companies exploiting “real-time data,” which he calls “the next billion dollar market opportunity.” Conway is already an investor in Twitter and Facebook, two companies solidly in the real-time space. He’s recently invested in other very young startups like Scoopler and Twitvid. Both are Y Combinator startups. He’s also an advisor to Topsy, a new real-time search engine that launched recently.
David Lee and Brian Pokorny from Baseline now work with Conway directly. Anderson is re-staffing Baseline and will continue to invest $10 million -$12 million per year in young startups.
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The paperback version of the book was just released (buy it here). The book includes a new chapter titled “The Fail Whale” that’s all about Twitter.
The chapter begins with a discussion of the infamous Fail Whale, the image that Twitter put up when the service was down. CEO Evan Williams told Sarah “I hate that fucking whale”:
Twitter’s unreliability had stretched nearly a year by that summer, getting worse by the month. The site could be down for hours a day, for days at a time. Twitter users were getting impatient. People had started to rely on the system as a sort of personal news feed, a way of connecting with friends, and a tool for tracking events. When it went down, people flew into a rage. It only made them angrier that Twitter’s staff wasn’t saying much of anything about why the outages were occurring or when they would end. The Twitter team wasn’t trying to be obtuse; they just didn’t know what to say. They were just as stumped.
The Fail Whale was cute at first. In fact, undeniably so. But when you saw him every time you tried to message a friend or Tweet a new blog post, his oblivious grinning expression became maddening.
As furious as users were, they stopped short of tearing Twitter down or abandoning the site altogether. There was something about Twitter that Silicon Valley rooted for; a remarkable sense of goodwill for a company that was continually letting its users down for months. Friendster certainly hadn’t been cut that kind of slack.
Even the whale itself developed fans. The problem went on long enough that a weird Stockholm Syndrome developed. A Fail Whale fan club emerged. One guy got a Fail Whale tattoo. The woman who’d designed the art started to produce T-shirts and mugs. She sent a box of Fail Whale T-shirts to Twitter’s offices late in the summer, but the joke was wearing thin on a staff battling the problem day and night.
Sure, some staffers found it funny. After a point you just have to laugh, right? But ask CEO Jack Dorsey about wearing a Fail Whale shirt and you’ll get this answer: “l won’t wear any shirt with a whale on it, ever. It has put me off the whole species.” Twitter’s cofounder Evan Williams agrees: “I hate that fucking whale.”
The chapter also goes into a lot of detail on the beginning of Twitter. Creator Jack Dorsey tells Sarah that the original idea goes back to when he was just fifteen years old:
That’s because Twitter didn’t really start in 2006. It started in Jack’s head back when he was fifteen years old. He was iust a geeky kid living in St. Louis in the 1990s who had an unnatural obsession with the dispatch industry. Particularly the armies of couriers who physically took something, put it in their messenger bags, and dropped the packages off somewhere else. He thought about it the way other fifteen-year-olds think about half-naked girls or Star Wars—with sheer awe that never seemed to end.
And when he thought of dispatchers, he would picture a huge map of New York city with blinking lights of couriers all acting like a flock of birds navigating the city individually, but also as one. A symphony of bikers fanning out in different corners of the city, crossing paths seamlessly, each on their own route, then coming back to the same place at the close of business. All controlled by one conductor; one master plan. “I wanted to write software to do it,” Jack says, “I just had to.”
The question of replacing Jack first came up for the board duriing the summer of 2008, while Twitter was raising another round of money. Taking the money meant that the company likely wasn’t selling, and the board asked whether Jack had the chops to take the company to the next level. Nothing was decided then, but it kept coming back up for two reasons: Things weren’t getting better between Evan and Jack and, increasingly, Evan was discovering that he did actually want to be the CEO of Twitter. Both Jack and Evan complained to the board, and the board decreed that one way or another, it couldn’t go on. So Fred Wilson asked Evan, “Do you want this? Do you want to be CEO?”
…
Twitter’s investor Fred Wilson and Spark’s Bijan Sabet were in town for a board meeting and the three of them decided the investors should deliver the news, not Evan. It would be easier for Jack that way. And really, the news wasn’t all bad. Jack would be awarded the second largest individual stake of Twitter stock and would be named chairman of the board. It was generous by any standards. Later that night, Jack went out with a few now-former coworkers. “Come on! This is a celebration,” one of them said. Jack smiled, but he couldn’t feel very celebratory on the inside. The next day it was announced with the ubiquitous face-saving line, “Jack Dorsey has decided to step down.”
On Twitter’s business model:
Indeed, that’s how Evan is thinking about Twitter’s business model too. The plan is to let corporate Twitter users use the service the way they want to - and charge them for it. There’s been a lot of debate over whether Twitter would have some sort of partial subscription business model or an ad-based one. Evan says neither. He’s planning something more creative that’s every bit an extension of the product as any free feature. “There are lame ways we could make money now. We have enough of a user base and enough traffic,” he says. “But it needs to be part of the system.”
Evan uses the word “system” a lot. He thinks of Twitter as a living, breathing organism - not unlike a flock of birds - that he needs to keep moving together, now that he’s taken over the lead position in the formation. Revenue is as much a part of that “system” as company culture, features, the user interface, and the behavior that happens on the site. “The revenue piece is pure product design,” he says, getting excited. “What are people trying to do and how much are we going to help them do it? Is this something only companies want? Then how much can we charge? And where’s the credit card field?”
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